An el train chugged across the tracks, shadows cutting in and out from the sun beaming above it. Cars cruised along the streets of Corona, Queens, as though there was nowhere to go. Storefronts sat like rows of sleepy eyes, their riveted steel lids rising just enough for their doors to open. The sidewalks were […]

For a time in the late 1980s, a local TV station in New York City aired late-night reruns of Naked City. The show, a black-and-white police drama set in New York, had originally aired from 1958 to 1963, the year of my birth. Those years were a critical period in the civil rights movement, and, […]

Got to pick these kids up. Oh why did we start a stupid car pool? Maybe car pools made sense in the suburbs of 1972 but…in Williamsburg, 1994? Still, it beats trying to get four five year-olds from Brooklyn to Avenue D in Manhattan by subway and bus. One big problem is our car. I […]